Colombia

Colombia’s second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), said on Wednesday that it is willing to hold peace talks with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos, fuelling hopes the country is poised to turn the page on five decades of bloodshed.

If the talks go ahead, the ELN would consider quitting the use of force, according to remarks on video by the group’s aged leader Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista. That could result in an end to rebel attacks on pipelines that caused oil output losses officially put at around $500m last year. Read more

Still, certain government insiders say Piketty’s writings have been much seen on the desks of senior officials in recent months. In his book, Piketty argues that inequality is a central feature of capitalism that can only be reversed through state intervention. Colombia, in spite of some recent advances, is still one of the world’s most unequal societies. Read more

Moody’s Investors Service, the credit rating agency, on Monday raised Colombia’s sovereign rating one notch to Baa2 from Baa3. This puts the Andean country in the same rating league as Brazil. The outlook is stable.

Colombia’s oil and gas industry – the key driver of the country’s growth over the last decade – is stuttering. In 2012 it reached its goal of producing 1m barrels per day, up from 600,000 bpd in 2008. But in 2014 attacks by insurgents on a key pipeline hit production figures and delays in obtaining drilling permits have prevented the development of new projects.

Most worryingly for the long-term health of the industry, however, has been a lack of major new discoveries. A handful of junior firms have made significant finds but much of the recent growth in production has been the result of optimizing previously discovered deposits, either by bringing online marginal fields or by boosting recovery rates through the application of new technology. At current production levels, the country’s 2.4bn barrels of proven reserves will last less than seven years. Read more

Juan Valdéz, the moustached embodiment for Colombia’s coffee industry (along with his loyal donkey), may be grinning from the sidelines. After sourcing coffee from the Andean country for 43 years, Seattle-based Starbucks opened its first store here on Wednesday.

The three-story store is the first of 50 the company plans to open here in the next five years. But to the joy of proud Colombians (even Señor Valdéz), this will be the only country in the world to serve exclusively locally-sourced Starbucks coffee. Read more

Recently re-elected Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos starts his second term in less than a month. As he won the election partly thanks to backing from an array of political actors – from leftists, to conservatives, to liberals – many think he may have some expensive favours to repay.

But foreign investors will probably be relieved that on Monday afternoon he gave his finance minister, Mauricio Cárdenas, a vote of confidence and reappointed him in the post. Read more

Colombia’s footballers have made it into the knockout rounds of the World Cup for only the second time in their history. As “yellow fever” grips the nation, the defence ministry has seized the moment and is hoping to use success on the pitch as a lure to draw the country’s armed rebels out of their trenches and closer to a peace deal. Read more

Colombia’s GDP data for the first quarter of 2014 came earlier than expected on Thursday morning, as if to be sure to avoid any distraction during the national team’s World Cup match against Ivory Coast.

When the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru meet on June 19 and 20 for the ninth Pacific Alliance summit in Nayarit, Mexico, they’ll likely debate a proposal that could transform their quietly successful pact while boosting Latin American unity.

At the urging of Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, the gathering is expected to broach the potential integration of the Alliance, which was formed among the four countries in 2012, and Mercosur, an older grouping that includes the regional heavyweights of Brazil and Argentina. The issue would represent a crossroads for the Alliance, however, since Mercosur does not generally share the enthusiasm for international trade shown by its neighbours on the Pacific coast. Read more

President Juan Manuel Santos says that if he wins Colombia’s elections he will put an end to the long-standing conflict with the Marxist insurgents of the Farc. He talks to Andres Schipani just days before the vote.

Colombians head to the polls on Sunday with the leading candidates for president separated by a shrinking margin that has suddenly made the race too close to call. Instead of a shoo-in for the centrist incumbent, Juan Manuel Santos, the campaign has turned into a bitter “dirty war” over the handling of a peace process with Marxist insurgents of the Farc that could finally end one of the world’s longest-running armed conflicts. Read more

The Pacific Alliance is all the rage in Latin America. As today’s FT special report shows, the members of this newly-formed free trade pact include some of the region’s best-managed and most reform-minded economies: Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. These countries do not represent some kind of Platonic ideal. They suffer problems aplenty. But their governments do pride themselves on hard-nosed business dealing rather than gassy ideology. That being the case, is there a way for portfolio investors to actually trade the idea? Read more